Gray body text

Has anyone noticed that the body text in any content item that came over from Bb7 displays in gray? It's hard to read! If you edit the content item and look at the code, there's nothing that turns the body text gray. If you create a new content item, the text displays as black.

Am I going nuts?

Don't answer that question. The real question is that I swear that the course ID was showing up in the gray box above the course menu in the shell. This is now not the case in the masters that came over. It is also not the case on the teaching shells that were created earlier this week. I can't locate a setting anywhere on the course level or at the system level that controls this. ????? The reason I'm sweating this is because I had planned to add as a training item that the course ID is visible at the top of the menu. Now there's NO way, not even in a little breadcrumb like we had in Bb7, to tell the ID of the shell you're in. Aargh. Can anyone offer clarity?

Images and Other Stuff

None of the images, simulations, etc. are in SCI201. The placeholders are there and the html links are there, but no images. I checked SOC101 and most, but not all images, audio, etc. were present. I will spot check 15-20 courses today and report back. Given that these two courses are memory intensive, I have to wonder if the size of the import file plays a role.

Issues?

What issues/troubles are you encountering in migrated masters? Please comment to add.

Here's my first one: in M8ENG100, When I try to edit an announcement that came over, I get the big ugly red error:



Worse, I can't delete it either.

Postscript: Recycling (now called Bulk Delete) removed the announcement. We may have to do this for all courses.

Brainstorming checkout and cleanup tasks

Things we need to look at/do in each course:

1. Click each link in Course Content of each course, including:

• links to external websites
• links to embedded files (make sure they download/open)
  
• links to attached files if any are still floating around

2. Check a graded discussion forum to make sure the grading works
3. Test both a test and an assignment from the student's perspective
4. Look for "invalid HTML" warnings in content areas
5. Check for properly enabled Course Tools (Control Panel > Customize > Tool Availability > all needed tools)
6. Fix course titles for any unnamed courses
7. Add Course Home module to each master page (the Course Modulator building block will automate some of this)

What else? Please comment to add more stuff to this list.

Masters are in

The migration of masters seems to have completed overnight. I dropped into a handful of courses. Many look good.

The only issue I see at first glance is that some came over with no title and no banner image. I can't figure out the logic behind those that came over with titles intact and those that didn't. Adding titles will be on the list of cleanup tasks.

PS - I added "cleanup" as a new tag.

Major milestone met

Because of everyone's cooperation, we have met a major milestone of the upgrade process. As planned, on Friday 7/23 I turned over the list of courses to be migrated by the LMS team. Today AJ began the work. We are right on track to begin checking out courses later this week.

I am grateful for your willingness to do the prep work quickly, carefully, and on time. Thanks all!

Some M courses deleted

Hi folks,
This afternoon I deleted about half a dozen courses from Bb9. Any courses with "real" master course IDs - M15HIS101 and M15GEO101 for example - had to be deleted, so that these IDs will be available when AJ migrates the shells this week.

Great Bb9 Resource

I am loving Princeton's Bb9 upgrade website, especially the FAQ and How-to section.

Two more clicks to apply new font color

Minor but annoying interface change around selecting a new font color for text:

Used to be: You used to be able to just click the desired color swatch in the pop-up (called the "color picker" by some, though I object to that term). Bb would apply the selected color to the selected text and close the pop-up for you.

Now: You must click the desired color swatch in the pop-up, scroll to the bottom of the pop-up, and click Submit.

"Course Home" question solved (sort of)

I've figured out why students see errors when they enter a course and see the Course Home page, even when instructors don't have a problem seeing the Course Home page. This discovery will affect both how we clean up Bb7 masters before migration, and how restored courses will need to be cleaned up after the migration.

ISSUE:
This Course Home page is built on the Module tool, a tool that is new in Bb9. Right now at the system (admin) level this tool is (or should be) enabled in all courses. It IS enabled in courses created fresh within Bb9. Despite this system-level setting, the Module tool becomes unavailable in a course when a course that originated in Bb7 is either restored or imported into Bb9. This setting loss causes two issues: 1) the instructor can see the Course Home page and thinks it's working fine, but students see the error; and 2) if the course menu doesn't contain a Course Home item by default, there's no way to add one. Nice!

[Side note: it's not just the Module tool that reverts to unavailable within the course despite the system level setting; this happens with any new tool or content type that didn't have a precursor in Bb7, including blogs, wikis, journals, image, video, YouTube Video, etc.]

RESOLUTION:
There is a fix but it's very manual and not very pretty:

1. Enter the affected course in Bb9.
2. In the Control Panel, click Customization > Tool Availability.
3. Click to select the checkbox for the Module tool, and click Submit to save.
4. In the course menu, click the Plus button, then click Create New Module Page.
5. Name the new page Course Home.
6. Be sure to select Available to Users.
7. Click Submit to add the page.
8. Use the drag handle to move the Course Home menu link to the top of the menu.
9. Now click the Course Home menu link.
10. On the Course Home page, click the Edit button (the down arrow) and select Add Course Banner.
11. Add the course banner and click Submit to save.
12. On the Course Home page, click the Add Course Module button.
    NOTE: when you create a Course Home page this way, by default users (students) cannot customize their personal view of the Course Home page. This is good - I argue we don't want students to customize this page.
13. Click the check boxes for the modules you want to add to the page. We can discuss, but I propose the Course Home page should contain the following modules:
    - Alerts
    - My Announcements
    - Needs Attention
    - What's New
14. To add the selected modules to the Course Home page, click Submit to save.

PHEW. That's a lot of steps. The good news is that we understand the problem and know one way to fix it. (Paying a contractor anyone?!?)

My research has found this building block that may allow us to re-enable the Module Tool and set the Course Home page in bulk. I've asked our LMS admin if he can install it. If not, this will be an important cleanup task on the far side of the master migration.

Automation of Groups

BB9 has significantly improved the ease of creating groups. The tool allows you to create a set of groups all at once. You can choose to have the members randomly placed, manually placed of self-placed into the groups. You can either set the total number of groups or the number of students you would like in each group, and BB9 does the rest for you! From this page, you can also select the tools available to the group.

Grade Schema?

We need to figure out:

1. Why there are multiple grade schema in course grade centers besides the default grade schema set by at the system admin level;
2. how to delete the unnecessary/duplicate grade schemas; and
3. whether there's a way to prevent instructors from building and applying their own schema at the course level. (On this point I did investigate privileges for the instructor role, but didn't find privilege rules around the Grade Center.)
   

Statistics of Grade Center columns

Good news: It's now possible to turn off statistics (average and median) in grade center columns. Instructors have often asked for this ability, citing student confusion and questions.

Bad news: Stats are still visible to students by default, and the setting is specific to each gradebook column. To hide stats, the instructor must change the setting on each individual gradebook column.

To hide stats, click the double-arrow button for any gradebook column that contains scores (e.g. not a calculation column) and select Edit Column Information. In the Options section, change "Show Statistics" from Yes to No. Then click Submit to save the change.

Viewing Student Grades

One way to view student grades in list form is to create a report.

To do this: go to Grade Center>Reports>Create Report.

Once to the report page, you have several options. You can create a report for one student, a group of students or the whole class. You can also choose different data to display in the report such as what to name the report, which users to include in the report, what user information (such as first and last name, course id, email, etc) to display, a description of the assignment and statistics for that assignment such as mean and median scores. Your report can also be specific to certain categories such as assignments, tests and quizzes, discussions and surveys.

Course IDs next to Course Titles

Whooooeeeee! I set up the Courses list on the Bb9 home page (My School tab) so that instructors (and students) see course IDs as well as course titles. YAHOO! This is a big "little" thing to help instructors tell the difference between their million course shells.

Practice lab Thurs 7/15

Hi folks,
I'll meet you at the Alumni training room a few minutes before 12:30 today. Things we'll look at today:

• One more focused look at the Grade Center
• Differences in Course Files and Content Collection features now that the system accurately reflects our license (e.g. no more Content System)
• Notifications / Course Home thing

Thanks. --Amy

Grade Center: Two things made massively easier

Two major grade center improvements:

1) you can reorder gradebook columns simply by dragging and dropping.
2) You can change categories en masse.

Both features are available in Full Grade Center > Manage > Column Organization.

Categories

To view which category an item is assigned to, go to:

Grade Center > Manage > Categories

Although the page appears to be disorganized, it is a neat tool that lets you see which category each assignment appears under in the grade book. You can’t edit anything in this area with the exception of category names.

Forum Grade versus Discussion

Discussion grades for courses transferred from BB7 will be categorized as Forum Grades in the gradebook in BB9 like they are in BB7, however, BB9 also has Discussion as a grading category. The theory is that a new forum will that is set up as graded, will by default be put into the discussion category. If this is true, then we may need to consider cleaning up the discussion categories across all courses.

Grade Center views

In the Control Panel > Grade Center, the instructor has three views: Full Grade Center, Assignments, and Tests. How are these column types determined though? By the category applied to each column? To be checked.

Follow up: These column types are determined by categories. If you click Grade Center > Tests, you only see columns assigned to the category "Test." Unfortunately BB7 assigned the category "Exams" by default to new tests, which means we won't be migrating many courses that utilize the category "Tests." Bummer. The "Assignments" view may be more helpful.

This is a training point.

Assignments in transferred courses

Assignments in courses that are transferred over seem to transfer correctly. They are editable by the instructor. For "Number of attempts," the default value is "Once."